Not saying much.
Nov 222011
Sep 172011
I don’t even know anymore, and through many people I’ve met this past week, everyone’s in the same boat, technically in 4th year but officially in 3rd.
This term looks very promising and fun, I’m doing mostly non-major courses:
CS 458 – Security/Privacy
PSCI 101 – Introduction to Political Ideas
PSCI 291 – Canadian Legal Process
SCI 205 – Physics of Hi-Fidelity Sound
SCI 206 – Physics of How Things Work
SCI 205 is a lot of reading and is offered online, so practically no work except the weekly assignments or something. CS 458 looks like a fun course, the prof is semi-competent and speaks acceptable English (he’s German). My other three profs are English speaking so that’s good. PSCI 101 is going to be a pain, there’s no seats in the class by the time I get there and it’s full of first years, so everyone except me is willing to participate.
PSCI 291 is a very interesting course, the course assumes no knowledge of the legal system and teaches it from almost nothing. It’s a night course for me, the lecture room is probably half full so there’s plenty of seats. Unfortunately, the course doesn’t cover copyright/trademark law, which is what I’m interested in learning. The textbook does have chapters in it so I’ll read them when I have time.
SCI 206 is a very fun course. The course is a physics class but without any equations. It’s supposed to be a general understanding of physics, essentially answering the question ‘how?’ and not ‘how fast?’. The way I see it, it’s Bill Nye the Science Guy, just a bit more detailed. This will probably be one of the top 5 courses I took in university. It also finishes off my school week on Thursday nights. I only have 3 days of classes this term with a 4 day weekend guaranteed.
Next term will be brutal with 3 CS courses, but I’ll be taking 2 Arts courses to hopefully make things easier for me to pass the term. RS 120 Evil and AFM 101 – Intro to Accounting. The CS courses I’ll be doing are Computer Networks (CS 456), Database Systems Implementations (CS 448) and Information Systems Management (CS 490).
In other things that are happening; I’ve moved over to pfSense for my router. The DD-WRT setup just wasn’t cutting it for me on the WRT54GL+SD mod so I bought new hardware for a x86 router. The install went smooth, the hardware is running quite nicely. There’s a lot to learn in order to use pfSense masterfully so I’ll be taking my sweet time with it.
Aug 152011
Back in grade 9, I was addicted to a game called Diablo II. I played about 6 hours a day, everyday. I had no care for what else happened, I didn’t focus on school at all. I’ve made some good friends playing Diablo II, I met Allan Cheng and Anthony Tran because of my Diablo II addiction, both of whom I became good friends with. I met Alex Wong, whom I consider the person who got me involved with web development and jump started me into PHP/MySQL — how I’m making my “living” today. If I can remember, he invited me to see a tennis match with him at the Rexall Centre at YorkU and the topic of web dev came up. I was already doing some PHP/MySQL before but it was Alex that suggested that I put more effort into learning it and try to make it a career. Alex was one of the leaders of the group I played Diablo II with and had me work on the group’s website indirectly.
It was also with the group, “Clan Lorings”, that I became fascinated with managing an online community. This led to the creation of the Mackenzie Forums, what I became known for at my high school. The project started off as a simple gathering with my friends and eventually became a 437 member forum that was forcibly taken down by administration upon my graduation.
That part explains how I got into web dev, but it doesn’t explain to me how I became a technology enthusiast. Until now. I have found the episode clip that got me into technology and starting to watch The Screen Savers regularly and eventually most of TechTV. I can’t say that I didn’t watch TechTV before that event, I watched X-Play with Adam Sessler when I got the satellite dish installed at home. I was probably watching a re-run of X-Play when I saw a teaser for TSS about Diablo II and MephBot. Here’s the clip:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAOMlHcaDNE
It was this moment that changed my life forever. This 8 minute clip led me to watch the entire episode and I enjoyed it. I found my calling, I was a techie.
TechTV eventually went away but only to come back as many entities: TWiT.tv, Revision3, DL.TV and many others. Kevin Rose, the Dark Tipper at TSS, is also the founder of Digg, where I used to get most of my tech news.
Things would have been really different had it not been for Diablo II. I might have simply ignored the teaser for Diablo/MephBot and might have just skipped TSS altogether. I don’t regret anything in life and for sure I don’t regret playing Diablo II.
Jun 112011
Earlier in May, I stumbled across a crazy deal for 23″ monitors: $139.99 (+$12.25 environment). They weren’t some cheap 23″ TN panels either, these were Dell U2311H monitors with full 3 year warranty. The original price was $319.99 but I was able to push two $90 coupons to get it down to $139.99. I now have a triple monitor setup and productivity has increase greatly.
I’ve started another work term at Engineering Computing again. Very nice place to work and the guys there are great. I’m working on the same stuff as the last time (and Management Science): OFIS. Super complicated reports generating and data mining.
OverPower is starting to pick up steam and we’re going to have our fourth meetup next week. OverPower is the card game that I play and have been collecting for 15+ years now. I’m primarily responsible for social media and outreach as well as doing the website and applications.
I’m just about to upgrade my Acer Travelmate 8204 (my laptop from March 2006). I’ve already gone ahead and added a new harddrive (500GB). I’m going to be adding in a new processor (T7200) and that would enable me to get more RAM (4GB from 3GB — BIOS limitation on the motherboard).
I’ve also purchase more RAM for my (old) file server turned virtual machine server. 4GB just wasn’t enough to run more than 2 VMs at once. And because of the spare RAM, I’m going to be building my own router/firewall, no more WRT54GL+DD-WRT. The router/firewall will be running either pfSense or Smoothwall or something else. I haven’t decided yet, Smoothwall has Linux drivers but pfSense is probably more robust with a FreeBSD kernel.
I’m 15 courses away from completing my degree. I’m doing 2 courses this term to help me complete my goal, CS 341 – Algorithms and PSYCH 101 – Intro Psychology. CS341 is a mandatory (super hard) course required for my degree. PSYCH101 is just a bird course (not really if you’re doing it online).
Apr 062011
I bought the keyboards mentioned in the post about 3 months ago. Was able to obtain enough coupons to bring the cost of the keyboards way below cost. The keyboard cost $45 after everything including exchange, which… is above par.
I’m just about to start exams, I have 4 in 5 days this year. I have an option to write my last exam either on the 12th or the 21st. Not sure how this is even possible but I chose to write it earlier to get 3 weeks of vacation before I start work.
Work is back at Engineering Computing @ UW. I was able to convince the Faculty that I wanted to complete my degree quicker and have more flexibility with my last terms by doing 2 courses during my work term. For that to happen, I would have to guarantee myself a work placement on or near campus. By going back to EngComp, that is very possible now. I will be taking Intro to Algorithms (CS 341) and Intro to Psychology (PSYCH 101). I was tempted to do another French credit, FR 192B, but I’ve decided that 3 is enough and I don’t think I want to learn any more.
My three weeks of vacation will spent mostly on coding. Specifically my OverPower stuff. I’m attending a tournament at the end of April, not sure how ready I am but with 3 weeks of preparation, I should be good. I’m still 2 cards away from completion, it looks like the seller that was selling me the two cards was bullshitting me, luckily I got my refund.
My health is somewhat the same, not much has changed. I had my MRI in March and will be doing a follow-up with my surgeon at the beginning of May. I hope that there won’t be any bad news and no more MRIs for the next while.
I’m back in Toronto on the 22nd or so. I might go back earlier but that depends if my dad has work or not leading up to Good Friday.
I’m not explicitly looking for a new laptop, but for ~$840 and 30 hours of battery life, 1600×900 resolution and a few other good specs, I might consider it. It’s a Lenovo T420, though I still need to work out what my ideal customization will be as I am confused as to which battery is actually the 9-cell slice. One thing that’s turning me away from the laptop is Lenovo’s choice to put Fn to the left of the left Ctrl.